Afghanistan was already in the back of my mind, on the morning of September 11, 2001: I was supposed to be there. As I walked to my office on a crystal-clear Fall day, I was thinking about my cancelled visit. I barely noticed the plume of smoke from across the Potomac. I was the Senate Foreign Relations Committee official responsible for all of South and Southeast Asia. My proposed trip to Afghanistan had been denied because the country was not deemed sufficiently important — the only time in what would turn out to be a 12-year career that such a request would be turned down. I thought Afghanistan was important. By 9 a.m., others would too. Anyone who followed counterterrorism issues immediately suspected that al-Qaeda was the culprit behind the morning’s attacks. And al- Qaeda was based in Afghanistan. I figured that this would become obvious very soon, but that the United States would invade Iraq instead: top officials in the Administration of U.S. President George W. Bush had been advocating such action for years. We ended up invading both. America’s relationship with the world's 1.8 billion Muslims would never be the same. My boss was the Committee’s Chairman: a senator named Joe Biden. As an anthropologist, I had conducted ethnographic fieldwork in a Muslim denomination spread throughout India, Pakistan, and elsewhere. In later years, Biden liked to say that he had brought me on board because he knew the importance of understanding global Islam. Until then, American policy makers had only a hazy notion of the world’s second-largest religion. But what would this mean for the conduct of U.S. wars in Afghanistan and (later) Iraq? Or for counter-terrorist operations in dozens of other nations? Or for diplomatic and political outreach to the 99.99% of the global Muslim population with no connection whatsoever to terrorism? Or America’s own Muslim citizens and residents, who comprise a community larger than the population of Singapore? The initial response from policy makers was better than I had feared. Less than a week after the attack, President Bush delivered a speech at the Islamic Center of Washington, DC. He urged Americans not to turn their anger against Muslims, and pointedly said, “Islam is Peace.” I took Biden to a mosque in his home state of Delaware — the first time he had ever made such a visit — so he could hear from Muslims who were his own constituents. In October, Biden gave   a   speech insisting that U.S. actions should narrowly target al-Qaeda terrorists rather than the Afghan population. Biden warned that an air campaign conducted without regard for innocent civilians would make the U.S. look like a “high tech bully” and alienate Muslims around the globe. Biden was criticized for this, but it proved all too accurate. The tonnage of munitions dropped on Afghanistan has never been accurately tallied, but an estimated 7,423   bombs   rained   down   in 2019 alone . I pressed the importance of showing the people of Afghanistan that our battle was not against them, and my boss agreed. Biden was the first American political leader to propose a billion-dollar pledge of reconstruction aid. A billion dollars may not sound like much today: the U.S. has now spent one thousand times as much in Afghanistan. 1 But when Joe Biden proposed   it   on October 3, 2001, the sum was more than triple what the Administration had offered or would for many months. For a while, it all seemed to work. I took Biden to Kabul just a few weeks after the Taliban fell and we found a populace hungering to build new lives. That summer, I went back without my boss. I travelled to Kandahar, Herat, and Mazar-i Sharif — wandering freely through the bazaars and mosques, accompanied only by relief-worker hosts. But the peace didn’t last. I travelled back to Afghanistan about three times each year for a decade, each time protected by a security detail armed to the teeth. What changed after 2002? In a word, Iraq. In a few more words: Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, torture, drone strikes, and the Patriot Act. America’s relationship with Muslims — both its own citizens and those of other nations — would be ruptured for years. Since then, we have elected the first four Muslim members of Congress, and a President named (after his Muslim grandfather) Barack Hussein Obama. But anti-Muslim sentiment among Americans spiked during the Trump Administration, which fueled Islamophobia by intolerant statements and actions from the very top. An influx of Afghan migrants and refugees — many of them fleeing the Taliban after having risked their lives for American service members — could spark another backlash of bigotry. I am hopeful, however, that Americans will take a different course. That they will remember to follow their best instincts rather than their worst. In sha’Allah.

Written by

Jonah Blank